Jillian Richardson is a Linkedin ghostwriter and runs “Make LinkedIn Weird”. Before degenerating into Linkedin work (I’m allowed to say this because I do Linkedin work), she did standup comedy and 6 years of improv training, which is where she gets her inspiration from.
In this episode, we talk about why you should be weirder on Linkedin, how to find your flavor of weird, whether you can say the word FUCK on Linkedin, and more. This one’s for you if you feel like your writing is too boring or you’re not able to get your full personality on paper.
Listen on: YouTube, Apple Podcast & Spotify
We discuss:
Why “Linkedin is the fakest place on earth” is the best news for anyone willing to be weird
The benefits of allowing yourself to be weirder
How to find your flavor of weird
Jillian’s envy-disgust matrix
The three-pass editing routine (this one was eye-opening to me!!)
Can you say fuck on Linkedin? Should you?
How to become funnier
This post is sponsored by Thormeier.co
Thormeier.co is my LinkedIn & Founder Brand advisory where I’ve worked with 30+ SaaS and AI founders grow faster on LinkedIn, build a stronger founder brand, and drive more pipeline from it.
If you want to understand how I work with founders, book a call here.
Show Notes:
Connect with Jillian:
Jillian’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thatjillian/
Make LinkedIn Weird: https://www.makelinkedinweird.com/
Jillian’s website: https://www.thatjillian.com/
Connect with Finn:
Finn’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/
Thormeier.co - Founder Brand & LinkedIn Advisory: https://thormeier.co/
Mentioned in the episode:
Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual: https://ucbcomedy.com/product/upright-citizens-brigade-comedy-improvisation-manual/
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron: https://juliacameronlive.com/register/the-artists-way/
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard: https://www.anniedillard.com/books-annie-dillard.html
Kait LeDonne: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitledonne-personalbrandingexpert/
Matt Barker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattjbarker1/
Jasmin Alić: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicjasmin/
Full Transcript:
Finn Thormeier: All right, my guest today is Jillian Richardson. She is a ghostwriter for solopreneurs and executives, and she helps people be weirdo on LinkedIn, which I love. I think much needed. The platform can use it. Her message resonated with me. I found you like a couple weeks ago on LinkedIn for the first time, stumbled upon my feed. So I wanted to have her on to learn from her and maybe get a free consultation for all of us here. So Jillian, thank you for joining the pod.
Jillian Richardson: Thank you so much for having me.
Finn Thormeier: Cool. Let’s maybe start with making the case for why people should be weird on LinkedIn.
Jillian Richardson: Okay, so I’m someone, I go to a lot of dinner parties, a lot of places where I meet new people, and I say, you know, I’m a ghostwriter for LinkedIn, and the faces... It’s very telling of, I think, what LinkedIn’s brand is in the world. Like people are like, oh, LinkedIn, like LinkedIn is horrible. It’s so fake. It’s everyone just talking about how accomplished they are and their career milestones. And it’s just the fakest place on earth.
Finn Thormeier: LinkedIn invented slop before AI slop were the thing.
Jillian Richardson: Yes. Like even before AI, it was slop. Why would you ever want to write content for that platform? And so then I get to say to them, well, imagine if you didn’t fit into that mold, how happy people would be to see your content because the bar on LinkedIn is not very high and there’s so much room for creativity and humor and personal stories. And it’s pretty easy to make yourself stand out if you actually have a point of view and you have a little bit of fun with it. So that’s my case for it. Everyone knows LinkedIn doesn’t have the best reputation. And so if you can make it a little bit fun for people who are slogging through LinkedIn, trying to get a job, make a business contact, whatever, they will love you and they will remember you.
Finn Thormeier: Is it fair to say that being weirder on LinkedIn is the same thing as showing your personality?
Jillian Richardson: Yeah, I would say so. I think being weird, showing your personality, I say because I teach a class on this, it doesn’t mean you have to be posting memes every day or only telling jokes. I think everyone has their own brand of what I call weird, but it’s really just your personality. And so it might be sharing takes in your industry that a lot of people disagree with, sharing stuff about your personal life that you’re comfortable sharing, sharing hard moments in your business. But for whatever reason, the framing of weird seems to help people think about things in a new way. Yeah.
Finn Thormeier: And I mean, I would say it comes at a time where it’s most needed for the platform because there is so much AI. I think LinkedIn just won the award of the platform that has the most AI slop
Jillian Richardson: on it. Wait, what do you mean? I didn’t hear this.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah, I think someone published, I think it was some major publication that did an analysis and it was like 43% of all of LinkedIn posts was categorized as AI slop. However, that was being categorized and it was the highest compared to X and Instagram and Substack and all the other platforms. But I think having a personality, showing your personality, being willing to show up the way that you are, maybe not fully, but more so, has always worked. But now, given that there’s so much AI-generated content, which I think, one, means there’s just a lot more content and a lot of the content just looks and sounds the same, just because everyone basically has the same ghostwriter now.
Jillian Richardson: Yep.
Finn Thormeier: I guess that’s why it’s even more needed right now versus, I don’t know, two or three years ago.
Jillian Richardson: A hundred percent. And the thing on AI, I don’t know if you saw that there’s now a new button on LinkedIn. It sounds like AI slop, which is fascinating that LinkedIn decided to add that to the platform. Like three weeks ago, they had an AI rewrite feature, but, uh, If people are going to use some sort of ghostwriting tool, now that there’s that button, you have even more of a reason to work with a human ghostwriter.
Finn Thormeier: It’s almost like signaling to everyone, but just having one weird sentence in there that’s like, this is really me. I actually wrote this.
Jillian Richardson: Yes. A person wrote this.
Finn Thormeier: Now, um, you also, I think on your website, you list kind of some benefits of being weirder.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah.
Finn Thormeier: What are some of the benefits of showing up weirder?
Jillian Richardson: So honestly, the biggest one I would say is that the more fun you have with your writing, the more you are likely to actually show up because so many people ha it’s kind of like with exercise. If you do a form of exercise that you super, super, super hate. You’re going to be less likely to go to the gym than, you know, if you sign up for a Zumba class and you’re like, oh, I love Zumba and I have all my friends there and it’s my favorite part of the week. So if you can actually see it as a creative writing exercise, a way to get to know yourself, a way to get to know the world, then you’ll show up and you’ll do it more. And consistency is what builds a social media presence.
Finn Thormeier: Okay. And I guess it’s, I mean, that’s one of the benefits, consistency. I mean, the other benefit I feel like is, and again, feel free to talk to other ones, but if this is actually you, you just have stronger bonds with people, with your audience, right? Because it’s...
Jillian Richardson: I totally agree with that. Because there’s this bizarre thing on LinkedIn where... People will hire a ghostwriter and then they’ll get some sort of AI commenting tool that’s like commenting and also in their DMs. And then I’ve heard this from a lot of people I work with. They have this bizarre experience of feeling like they know a person and then they get on Zoom and they’re like, wait, this person doesn’t seem at all like the person I was interacting with. Was I even interacting with the person at all? And a lot of the times it turns out that they literally weren’t. And what a terrible way to interact with your customer, that their first impression of you is, actually, I don’t know you at all.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah. Well, it can also, I mean, it goes both ways. I think oftentimes people will realize if you don’t allow yourself to show that weird or Weird side of you or that personality of yourself that on the call they’ll be like, you’re actually more interesting than I thought. Yes.
Jillian Richardson: That’s a great point as well. That’s a good flip side of, oh, actually I enjoyed talking to you more than I thought I would.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah. No broetry. You don’t speak in one line sentences.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah. Yeah.
Finn Thormeier: Okay. I want to show, do you have a favorite example of a weird person? Post or being weird on LinkedIn. I’m going to share my screen here. I’ll just show one here. So like one example, let me make this big. Do you just see my LinkedIn now?
Jillian Richardson: Yes, I can see it. This is my like pièce de résistance.
Finn Thormeier: Exactly. Yeah. So this is kind of, it’s a good example of a weird post because it’s also your post where you make the case that people should be weird. This is the post how I found you. It started with, I am on my knees begging, be weird on LinkedIn, 10% weird, 100% weird if you had a good breakfast. It’s already clear that this post has personality. This is a hook that no one would use on LinkedIn. It’s a very bold choice to start a sentence like that and no one sees that on LinkedIn. Then also it’s like, there’s a joke here. Take that Claude, there’s personality in it, right? And I think if people just scroll through your LinkedIn a little bit, they’ll get a sense of what it means To write with personality. Break it in half and shove it into a deep grave for eternity. Like you write with color. You say things that people would say. Relax your butthole. It’s like on your banner, right? It’s like you’re almost breaking the rules of what is appropriate to say on LinkedIn, which is part of why it works. So I think this is a... Good example here. Okay, now let’s talk about how to become weirder because my assumption is there’s all kinds of different weird. So when you work with people, how do you coach them through figuring out what their flavor of weird is, how they can bring that out? And maybe use me as an example. If that’s somehow helpful, but I’m just curious how you coach people through that.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah, so when I start working with ghostwriting clients, we do what I call a LinkedIn sample pack. And so it’s essentially, I create a content strategy for them and then I write three LinkedIn posts for them so they can get a sense of, One, help them figure out what is their voice, but also do they even like the process of working with the ghostwriter? Because some people really think that they will, and then someone writes for them and they’re like, actually, I hate this so much. And part of that is figuring out who on LinkedIn or on the internet in general, do you see their content and you like their voice, you like the way they speak, you like what they stand for. And then probably more importantly, Whose content do they see online? And it kind of grosses them out. Like the exercise I do is the envy disgust matrix of like whose content are you jealous of? Which is indicative of you might want to move more towards that direction. Like they have something that maybe you’re a little afraid to do, but you want to do. And then whose content you see and you’re like, oh, like if I posted that, I would jump out a window and never return. Gives you the ick. Yeah, like it gives you the ick. That is an incredible indicator of what your voice is because you’re like, this is the line I do not cross. That’s super helpful information to know. And sometimes you don’t know that until you see something you don’t want or somebody writes something for you and you’re like, this isn’t it actually. Okay.
Finn Thormeier: So envy, I love the envy and disgust. So I assume that a lot of people who end up Working with you or reaching out to you, they like your particular brand of weird.
Jillian Richardson: Yes.
Finn Thormeier: So there is that if you weren’t ghostwriting for someone and you were just working with someone who is writing their own content, but maybe they’re a little stuck in like this idea of what they think LinkedIn should be or how they need to show up because it’s LinkedIn, they have this thing in their head. How would you help them break that and then figure out their Brand of weird.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah. So I also offer, you know, like coaching packages, like you said, for people they want to, they want to do it themselves, but they want support along the way. And often when we get on calls, like they’ll bring a few bullet points of like, Hey, here’s some stuff I want to put in this post. And I just don’t know how to make it unique or how to write the hook for it. Like, I don’t, I don’t know what the special sauce is. And literally as I’ll just have them talk about it. And as they talk, I will start to write the post for them. And sometimes that’s all they need is just realizing, oh, when I’m speaking about this in a conversational way, there’s stuff in here that does make an interesting post, but you know, they’re so in their head of what is the LinkedIn way of saying this? They don’t think about that. They can just speak like a person and you know, then I’ll be like, okay, Here’s an interesting hook to get us in and here’s your call to action that might be compelling to people to interact with you. But a lot of people really just need space to go back and forth with the human being to figure out what it really is that they want to say.
Finn Thormeier: So I imagine myself talking through a post. What are you listening for? I’m sure at this point it’s a lot of intuition. You kind of just know it when you hear or see it. But if you had to train someone on, here are the things you’re listening for. Here are the things that once you see them, hear them, make sure you include them.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a big thing is I’m listening for what might be The hook of the post, because on LinkedIn, you know, you have the first two lines that you see before there’s the learn more button. And what I tell people is a really good hook is often something that’s a little bit scroll stopping. Like you said, like I’m on my knees begging. That’s not a sentence that you usually see on LinkedIn.
Finn Thormeier: It’s a pattern disrupt.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah, it’s a pattern disruptor. And then the second sentence is often something Leaves people wanting to learn more about where is this post going to go? Like you’re not entirely sure what’s going to happen next. So you want to read the rest of the post. And so that’s what I’m listening for. I’m like, oh, what is the thing that this person is saying that is not necessarily a common belief? It’s something that’s out of the norm. And how can I start the post with that in a way that piques people’s curiosity?
Finn Thormeier: But I mean, a hook is not necessarily weird, right? That’s more like what is the interesting, controversial, unusual thing in what you’re saying that we can use to hook people. But when it comes to the weirdness or the personality part on how to add flavor to it, how do you draw that out?
Jillian Richardson: Yeah. Well, one thing I think I would say that a hook kind of is quote unquote weird because it is the What is a way that you’re, what’s a point of view that you have that’s not necessarily the norm? Like I would argue that is kind of what you might say is weird. But another way I do that for the post is in the editing process where the first pass, it’s usually a more standard kind of regular, degular LinkedIn post. And then the second pass of the post, I’ll take out, you know, any fluff, any words that you might not need in there. And then the third pass of the post is where I will like to add, you know, colorful phrases, things in all caps, things that just make people laugh a little bit. And I think that’s where a lot of people miss out with their LinkedIn posts is they just, you know, they write the first draft and that’s it. And they never think about an example I like to give is just make up a person’s name. Like if you’re talking about an issue that happens in HR all the time. Don’t just say people in HR do this. Be like, have you ever had Mark from HR? He always does this thing. We, like, everyone hates Mark. Like, I guarantee if you do that in a post, the comments are going to be dudes named Mark. Like, hey, what did I do? And like, it’s going to be a fun bit that people can respond to. It’s like little things like that. People want to have fun with your post. You just have to give them something to latch on to.
Finn Thormeier: Interesting. I like that third pass, adding personality to it. How do you even come up with this idea? I love the example that you gave with Mark from HR, but maybe that’s just your unique skill and that’s what people need to hire you for. How do you even train someone to think of that? I don’t think I would think of that even once I give it a third pass and I’m like-
Jillian Richardson: I mean, part of me is like, I’m a special, beautiful genius and no one can do it like me. But in actuality, I’m like, okay, why is it that I can do that? A big thing is I have a lot of improv training. It’s just thinking of, you know, like what are jokes that you can insert here? What are interesting turns of phrase? Like I read a lot. I consume a lot of content. I know what is an interesting phrase that stands out and will get people’s attention. So. I think that’s a way that people can do it.
Finn Thormeier: So is it like learning about comedic writing, like, like learning from, I don’t know, Seinfeld or is it, is that how you would approach teaching this to someone like studying comedians?
Jillian Richardson: I think that’s one way of doing it. This is a good question because in my classes, it’s a lot about accessing your personality. Like essentially my classes are creative writing classes, but they’re not. Only teaching humor. So honestly, okay, if I was to tell someone, how do you figure out what is funny? I have two books that are underneath my computer right now. One is the Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improv Manual. Would very much recommend that. It’s such a stereotypical business piece of advice, but I am someone, I have done way more improv than the average person. I did improv for six years very seriously, which is a funny thing to say about comedy. But this manual, it’s a lot of exercises to help you figure out how can I think of something that’s out of the norm?
Finn Thormeier: I thought there’s two relevant books. You just said there’s two books and one of them is relevant.
Jillian Richardson: The other one is just... Honestly, actually the other one, I do occasionally mention this book in my class as well. The other one is called The Artist’s Way. Have you heard of that before?
Finn Thormeier: What’s the... Is it Austin something?
Jillian Richardson: It’s Julia Cameron is the
Finn Thormeier: author of that book.
Jillian Richardson: The Artist’s Way. This is a little bit woo, but it’s... Essentially, it’s this 12-week process of getting creatively unblocked where you are journaling three pages every day, free form, and then there’s a lot of questions and exercises to figure out, you know, like, what did you love as a kid? How did you find joy? How were you a creative person? Wait, do you have this book?
Finn Thormeier: No. Okay, no. But it made me think of that. It’s called The Writer’s Life.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Finn Thormeier: The Writing Life.
Jillian Richardson: Yes. I’m sure those books would be very complementary to each other. But like, I really do think my writing classes, they’re just, They’re creative writing classes. A reason people freak out so much, particularly about LinkedIn writing and why they can’t have fun with it is because it’s like a professional platform. So there’s all this extra stuff. I want to be taken seriously and I want to be known in my industry and seen as a A trusted person. And so there’s all of these barriers to saying anything that will make you like 1% interesting. So it can take some work to unblock yourself.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah, I think part of it is just giving people permission that it’s okay to use strong language or to use all caps or to say things like butthole on LinkedIn. Do you know if there’s a line? Like sometimes I think, I don’t know, if I was in conversation with someone and we were talking about something and I hate something, I would say, I fucking hate this.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah.
Finn Thormeier: But then as I’m writing the LinkedIn post, I’m like, first of all, fucking hate is very strong language. Do I really want to say this? And then the second thought is like, you always hear like the random guru, LinkedIn guru who says you can’t use swear words because LinkedIn will like derank your post if you say the F word or, you know, like, and I don’t know if it’s true, but like, that’s also where my mind goes. It’s like, I don’t want to like, Shadowban my own post just because I use the word fucking hate in the post. I don’t know. Have you found, is there a line if I say fucking hate in a conversation? Do I just say that? Do I say frigging hate in the post? Like, what’s the line?
Jillian Richardson: So, I mean, one option is to literally just use an asterisk in place of the you. Like, you could do that. But then there’s also ways that you could use more fun language. Like, have you seen The Good Place before? No. In it, there are In like an alternate universe and they can’t swear. So instead of fuck, they say fork. And I’ve said this in a bunch of my posts. I’d be like, oh, I fork and hate this or something. And people find it so delightful. So like, you’re like, okay. I’m trying to get across this very strong language. Could I say, I freaking hate it, I fracken hate it, I forken hate it?
Finn Thormeier: So you also feel like fucking is too hard of a word to use on LinkedIn?
Jillian Richardson: I don’t think it’s, honestly, I have swear words in my posts sometimes, but I do also have the little fear of like, oh, if I do this too much, that might be a problem. So I don’t know why my own internal line, I’m like, shit for me is totally fine, but fuck, I get nervous. No clue why that is.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah.
Jillian Richardson: Um, so yeah, asterisk or like figure out a more fun way to get the same thing across.
Finn Thormeier: Totally. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So taking some improv classes, reading about comedic writing and you know, the, the Upright Man’s, what was the book? The Upright Man’s?
Jillian Richardson: Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improv Manual.
Finn Thormeier: It’s a really
Jillian Richardson: long title.
Finn Thormeier: Who like Do you study anyone else? And this could be a creator on LinkedIn who you love or a comedian, a writer who you study and learn from?
Jillian Richardson: This is going to sound so horrible, but I’m like, honestly, no.
Finn Thormeier: Why does it sound horrible? No, it’s okay.
Jillian Richardson: I mean, I don’t know. I’ve just been a writer for so long where people are like, how do you do this so fast? I’m like, I don’t know if you do something every day for like 12 years, you’re going to be really fast at it and it’s going to come really naturally. Like that’s just how it goes. I mean, I love following creators who teach on LinkedIn because I do always have things to learn from them. Like Kait LeDonne, I love her, Matt Barker, Jasmin Alić. These are all people that they have a lot of interesting insights. But I think my unique advantage is just the personality piece, which is kind of like, it’s a little bit vibes based.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah. I think even beyond that, beyond giving people permission that it’s okay And actually works really well if you do these things. I think I just lost my train of thought.
Jillian Richardson: It’s black space. You got to give people permission to do something and then there’s something else.
Finn Thormeier: Permission. It’s okay to do it. Oh, I remember. I think part of it is also Giving people permission to actually care about how they write and how they show up. Because I think part of it is also because of the reputation that LinkedIn has, where it’s this professional platform that’s kind of sold us a little bit. You just show up there because you kind of have to and you want to get business and there’s a lot of slop, AI slop and human slop, slop and broetry and all these things that you kind of just do it because you kind of have to and therefore you don’t really care. Maybe you use Claude because it’s just easy and fast and you can prompt something and you get five LinkedIn posts out of it and people tell you that it doesn’t really matter and you just need to hope that one of your posts somehow goes viral. Part of what you’re also showing people is that if you actually care about showing up as yourself and you care about the craft of creative writing, it works. Like it actually makes it changes things.
Jillian Richardson: Yes. Like it’s more vulnerable. It’s more scary because you actually care. Like, you know, you hit post and you’re like, oh, these are my words. Now I’m looking to see if people are interacting with it. Versus if you do a Claude post and it doesn’t perform well, you’re like, well, Claude wrote it, stupid Claude, whatever. It’s a more vulnerable act.
Finn Thormeier: Which is actually a correlation to another thing because I think, and I don’t know if you see the same thing, But you got to be active on LinkedIn, right? You can’t just post something and then peace out and don’t engage, don’t reply to people. And obviously, if you wrote something yourself that you really care about, you’re naturally going to be more likely to be around and stick around and actually answer the comments and questions that you get versus if you have some generated thing You’re like, you schedule it, you peace out, you check in maybe the next day, maybe you have two comments, but you’re like, nah, I’m not going to answer those because, you know, it’s not really my thoughts anyway.
Jillian Richardson: Yep. Oh my God. That is such a good point that you, you feel more personally connected. So you’re more likely to stay and you engage with people more. Yeah, it is like this. Do you have a LinkedIn page?
Finn Thormeier: Do you have a LinkedIn routine? Do you have things that you do every day or every week besides, you know, posting that you found have a large impact on kind of how your posts are doing and how LinkedIn is working for you?
Jillian Richardson: I have a few little things that I do, which it’s funny, the things that I do, I would assume that everyone does. And then I learned that they did it. And I was like, Oh, this is maybe not as obvious as I thought it was. Uh, one example is when I get connection requests, I Respond to them. Like I don’t just hit accept. I hit accept and then I send them a message. And I like to do this in chunks because on LinkedIn you can get like freaking 500 connection requests and you’re like, ah, what do I do? So I have my little walking pad underneath me and I like to just get on my walking pad, play some music. And then I have an opening message that I use for everyone, which is now kind of a bit because people know it’s my opening message. And I just say like, hey, thank you so much for the connection request. If you found me through an embarrassing post, No, you didn’t. And the response rate for that is super good. And then people respond and I usually say like, did you follow me because you’re looking for LinkedIn support? Or are you just, you’re here for the laughs and the vibes? And the amount of business I’ve gotten, the amount of podcast invites, the amount of opportunities, Because when you accept a connection request, it just kind of goes, it files into their connections, but they don’t get a notification. So it’s like, there’s this person, they wanted to connect with me for some reason. If I don’t say something, I’ll literally never know. It’s such a wild wasted opportunity that so many people just don’t say anything.
Finn Thormeier: I don’t do it.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah. Like just, I mean, granted, it’s a little bit of effort, but
Finn Thormeier: I do it for followers. I just thought, why don’t I do it? I go through my followers almost every day, and if someone follows me, I send the connection request, and I’m like, hey, appreciate the follow. How come? What do I owe it to? And then I try to do the same with profile visitors. I try to do the same with people who engage with my content but I’m not connected with, and they kind of fit my profile of the people that I’m interested in. But I don’t do it when I accept connection requests.
Jillian Richardson: And I feel like that’s the easiest one. I feel like connection request is like the highest, not status, like highest indicator of interest, I guess.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah. Huh.
Jillian Richardson: So there you go.
Finn Thormeier: Freak business tip
Jillian Richardson: for me.
Finn Thormeier: Quick, quick tip there. Quick tip there. Okay. Anything else that you do?
Jillian Richardson: Um, anything else that I do?
Finn Thormeier: Do you have a minimum comments per day?
Jillian Richardson: I don’t have a minimum comments per day, but I do have a lot of people’s profiles double-belled, meaning I have notifications on for them for when they post because otherwise I will often forget to comment anything on anyone’s posts and so I have people in my industry who I will learn something from their posts or people who I just really enjoy what they post. So at the very least, I will do that. And then usually when that happens, I’m like, oh, right, I should probably go and comment on one or two other people’s posts. And that’s usually enough for me.
Finn Thormeier: I think I saw you post that you recommend people to comment on 10 to 15 posts a day.
Jillian Richardson: Yes, I think that’s definitely ideal, especially if you’re someone who your own posts aren’t getting that many comments yet. So the thing my students will ask is, well, how do I get my posts seen by a broader audience? Like my posts aren’t popular yet. So how do I expand that? I’m like, well, you need to tell people that you exist. And the best way to do that is go and comment on the posts of people who aren’t following you and interact with them. So I think especially when you were in the earlier stages, that is very helpful.
Finn Thormeier: It’s one of the first things I look at when someone is posting on LinkedIn. First, I look at their content and see if it’s any good, but if I feel like they’re actually posting decent things, then I look at how often they comment. Yeah. And oftentimes like, it’s like the last comment they left was like a week ago.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah.
Finn Thormeier: And so I’m like, that’s, to me, that’s often like the first thing I would fix is like, just comment on maybe not 10 to 15, maybe five posts a day and just do that for a month. And almost always the content is better.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah. And respond to their own comments. I’m like, when people post and they don’t respond to their own comments, I’m like, isn’t the whole point of this that you want people to comment and that you’re not even going to respond to them?
Finn Thormeier: No, no, no, no. The whole point is you build a machine with Claude and that automatically posts things for you and comments things for you such that you can lean back and you have just leads. Like running in your door.
Jillian Richardson: Yes. And they think that they were interacting with you and they never actually were, which is totally fine and normal for everyone.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah. Now you also ghostwrite for clients besides being weirder and kind of allowing yourself to show personality. What are some of the other things that you’ve learned or seen that oftentimes helps get better traction, have your posts do perform better or get better results from LinkedIn?
Jillian Richardson: Yeah. So honestly, I think the biggest thing with a lot of my clients and my favorite clients to work with is that they start the ghostwriting process a little bit uncertain that they have something interesting to say. Like, they’ll be like, I don’t know if I should be posting. Like, I don’t know what’s unique about me. And I really enjoy that because it’s so fun to pull out from people. What are their interesting stories? What does make them different? Because everyone has stuff to share. And most people I work with, they’re very good at communicating their thoughts on their industry. If I ask them a question, they’ve got a lot to say. It’s just figuring out. You know, how do you position this in a little snippet of a LinkedIn post? That’s just not a skill that they have, but they could talk forever. Like that’s the ideal situation. And, you know, helping them gain the confidence that people are interested in what they have to say. And I think people especially need or could benefit from a ghostwriter in those early stages where, you know, they will Post, and then they’ll be so scared they’ll just leave and then not interact with comments or anything because there’s just this fear wall that they’ve got going on. And to also just have it in the calendar every week to be like, okay, first half of the call, we’re going to edit our posts for this upcoming week. And then second half of the call, we’re going to generate new content and like They just have that so that they don’t have to do all the mental gymnastics of writing a post every day. It just lowers the barrier to entry.
Finn Thormeier: If someone wanted to get started, founder, executive, solopreneur, whatever, do you have a program or a protocol that you would tell them, like, just start with this? Meaning, do these many posts a week? Spend this much time on the platform? Do these three non-negotiable things? What’s the kind of good starting protocol?
Jillian Richardson: Yeah, it’s a good question. I feel like it’s easier said than done, but I would say three to five posts per week. Ideally five, of course. Four is better, which some people don’t agree with, but I really do think that’s true. Respond to all of your comments. Do the five comments on a post that’s just a random post not connected to you at all. And respond to all the people who are sending you a connection request and chat with them in the DMs. Even if they’re not new business, they could give you insight on your content, why they found it interesting, what they want to hear more of. I’m just shocked at the amount of people who post on LinkedIn and then do not interact with the humans who are interacting with their content. I’m like, you’re literally ignoring your business. What are you doing?
Finn Thormeier: Yeah. I think part of it, at least for me, the AI comment slop has negatively impacted that because one, obviously, if it’s a fully automated AI slop comment, you’re like, I don’t want to answer this. But then I noticed this for me where Sometimes it’s so obvious when it’s an AI comment, right? And sometimes it’s kind of on the edge where you’re like, I’m getting vibes that this might be AI, but I’m not 100% certain. So I’m like, If it’s a real person asking me an actual question, I want to answer it. But if this is just an automated thing that you generated with AI and you didn’t actually read my post, I don’t want to respond to you. There’s a little bit of this decision fatigue going on of like, do I actually want to engage with this? But yeah, it’s crazy how many people don’t reply to their comments. I think part of it is people want to skip the hard work of starting out slow and then slowly compounding over time.
Jillian Richardson: Yes.
Finn Thormeier: And so it’s like they post, they get two comments. They’re like, oh, this is not what I was hoping for. Right. I wanted to get the 50 comments. So like, I’m not going to even bother to reply to two comments, which is like, that’s how you get to the 50 comments. Right. So yeah. Okay.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah. This is another argument in favor of making your posts more fun and incorporating humor because like on my posts, it’s painfully obvious what the AI generated comments are because AI doesn’t do humor.
Finn Thormeier: They don’t get the irony. Yeah.
Jillian Richardson: And so if you have jokes in your posts and then there’s a comment that’s like dead serious, you’re like, um, Read the room. This doesn’t make any sense.
Finn Thormeier: Or they’re a tech engineer who doesn’t get humor either. Okay. Three to five posts a week, respond to all of your comments, write five comments every day, DM all of the people who send you connection requests if they’re relevant. How long do you tell people to go through that until they should expect something to happen that resembles kind of ROI?
Jillian Richardson: Yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, I feel like even after one month, there’s no way you’re not going to have an uptick. Like most of my students, I challenge them to post every weekday. Yeah. The numbers are always so good in terms of their impression increase because they straight up were not really posting before. And so it’s like, yeah, you’re going to have like a 12,000% increase in impressions because you were going from nothing to this or like 600, 900, whatever. So after one month, if you’re actually doing a thing, there’s no way you’re not going to see an uptick in your impressions. And then from there, it’s just having that muscle of doing it consistently. Uh, which for a lot of people is really hard and which is why I recommend getting help if you can, or if your company has the money. Um, but if you’re doing it solo, like just trying to figure out again, how to make it actually fun and where you’re learning about your business, you’re learning about your customers. You have a sense of curiosity. Cause if you don’t like you’re, you’re dead in the water, you’re never going to be consistent.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah. And I think that’s also the biggest case for why posting five times a week, because there’s people who are successful posting twice a week, but you kind of got to get through that valley of figuring out what works for you and building that audience. And obviously if you post five times a week for four weeks, you have 20 goals on shot.
Jillian Richardson: Yes.
Finn Thormeier: You’re going to iterate much quicker than if you do two posts a week, at which point it takes you two and a half months to get the same shots on goal as the other person that one month.
Jillian Richardson: That’s such a good way of putting it. I’m totally going to steal that. That’s really good.
Finn Thormeier: That’s why you kind of answer the question of like, because I think it’s not, people always ask me how many months until I see results, which is like, how many hours are you spending? Because it’s like, if you’re spending an hour a week prompting Claude, Um, you know, versus someone else who spends two hours a day, they’re spending 10 hours a week. They’re spending 10 X what you’re spending. So what you learn in 10 months, they learn in one month. So it’s, that matters way more than, than just the month from when you posted your first post.
Jillian Richardson: That is such a good way of framing it.
Finn Thormeier: Anything we should have talked about that we didn’t, anything that you find yourself often repeating to clients that you wish people understood about LinkedIn or how to be weird that we should have covered?
Jillian Richardson: Okay. One thing popped to mind. This is something I seem like I hear it more from my male clients, but it’s that People in their life start making fun of them for posting on LinkedIn. They’ll get a screenshot of one of their posts in their group chat, and they’re like, dude, what the hell are you doing? This is so embarrassing. People really rag it on them. And it makes them want to stop. Which one, I’m like, your friends are being Just major dickheads. Like they’re being horrible, but like, I get it. This is kind of part of dude culture sometimes. Um, but it’s just like, you’re trying something new. You’re trying it in public and make sure you have people in your corner who are game to support it. And like, because it’s LinkedIn, it’s extra easy to make fun of it, which sucks. Uh, But you got to be able to push through that. Like you’re doing this for a reason. You’re doing it for your business. You’re doing it for your family, whatever that might be. And sometimes people are going to be mad about it. And that’s just how it goes.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah. I also where my mind went is there is a difference between uncomfortable and cringe. Yeah. And I think the whole point of what you’re teaching people is Finding their brand of weird or, you know, showing the personality that they actually have in their content.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah.
Finn Thormeier: Which might be uncomfortable because it’s new and you haven’t done it before and you might get comments from your friends. But in the end, it’s you versus if you just do something that you believe you should be doing on LinkedIn because the gurus tell you that that’s how you need to write your posts.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah.
Finn Thormeier: And it’s not you, that’s cringe, right? That’s you showing up in a way that’s not authentic to you, even though the word authentic is being overused. And I think it’s much worse to be made fun of when you’re performing in a way that’s not you just because you feel like that’s what you need to do given the platform versus you just show up how you actually are.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah.
Finn Thormeier: And that’s uncomfortable for a while because it’s a new muscle, but in the end you’re expressing yourself.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah, totally. Like you’re, you’re being yourself, you’re bringing yourself out, which I guess, I think it depends on the person is writing it yourself even more vulnerable. Like, yes. If someone makes fun of you, actually you’re writing, is that going to be harder for you? Maybe like it depends on the person, but I really feel like a thing that I like to say is just trying is sexy. Just try. I feel like with AI and just LinkedIn culture and everything is like, oh, you got to optimize it and you got to do it so it’s the fastest thing ever. Shocker, what if you actually enjoyed it and you saw it as a slow creative process where you learn about yourself, you get to meet new people, you get to have fun. What if that was actually sustainable and good for you and you like it and it’s gonna be more vulnerable and that’s just how it goes.
Finn Thormeier: Yeah, I love it. Okay, my biggest takeaway from this conversation is I’m gonna try to learn some comedic writing. I’m gonna order the Upright Citizens book and I’m gonna ask Claude what the best books are that it recommends. On, you know, learning creative writing or comedic writing.
Jillian Richardson: Yeah. And Claude’s like, don’t do it. Don’t.
Finn Thormeier: I have been trained. Cool. Thank you, Jillian, for taking the time. If people want to check you out, obviously I’ll put your LinkedIn and your website in the show notes so people can reach out to you if they want to get weirder on LinkedIn or maybe hire you as a ghostwriter. They can do that. And yeah, thank you for your time.
Jillian Richardson: Thank you so much. I had fun.
